Extraordinary Ability
Those who are filing for either O or P status should know that, surprise, the processing time listed on the USCIS website for O and P visas is incorrect. Currently, USCIS California Service Center is listing a processing time of 2 weeks. Unfortunately the actual time period is 8-10 weeks,
Adjustment of Status
The Department of State recently released the December 2015 visa bulletin and Mr. Charlie Oppenheim, the person at the Department of State in charge of the Visa Bulletin also recently gave AILA an update on his predictions for future movement of the Bulletin. I will summarize both of these documents
F-1
On October 19, 2015 USCIS issued a proposed rule regarding STEM OPT extensions for those in F-1 status. If you were not aware, USCIS was sued in Federal Court over the previous rules as there was no formal rule-making on those. The Court gave USCIS until February of 2016 to
Adjustment of Status
USCIS has updated its directions in terms of when the new "Dates for Filing Visa Applications" chart can be used to determine when you can file your I-485, or if you need to wait for the "Final Action Date" to become current. To refresh people'
Adjustment of Status
Everyone is familiar with the I-9 form, and for many employer, it seems unduly burdensome and they treat it as a formality - as long as the person has the right documents, whether the form is fully complete or not doesn’t really matter,. However, according to our law, and,
DOL
Recently, BALCA (Bureau of Alien Labor Certification Appeal), the agency that hears appeals when a Labor Certification is denied, has made several important decisions. This post will describe a couple of the most important decisions. Accent-Media Productions, Inc., 2012-PER-712 (September 23, 2015) We advise all our clients on the documents
Immigration
The November, 2015 visa bulletin was just released today. While there has been some movement, it has mostly been with the Application File dates, not the Final Action dates. Family Based: Almost every family based category for every country moved forward about 1 month in their final action dates. The
Adjustment of Status
Just about 1 month ago I wrote a blog post on using premium processing for EB-1 (both Outstanding Researcher and Extraordinary Ability) and EB-2 National Interest Waiver applications. Well, USCIS just put in place a new policy that may cause, at least some people, to change their minds and not
Immigration
Last night President Obama signed a continuing resolution funding the government through December 11, 2015. The bill also extended the Conrad 30 program, the Religious Worker Program, and the EB-5 Regional Center program to December 11, 2015 as well. I hope that some agreement will be reached prior to December
Immigration
As many, if not all, of you know, currently our government has no funding after September 30, 2015 as Congress has not passed either a budget or a continuing funding bill as of yet. If the Government were to shut down, consular services for those waiting for visas overseas would
Immigration
DOS just put out a revised visa bulletin for October, 2015. No Final Action Dates were changed. The only changes made were to the Dates for Filing. Below are the changes that were made: In the Family Based categories the only changes made were for Mexico in the F1 (unmarried
Immigration
While not a major issue as we are less than 1 week away from October 1 and the beginning of the new fiscal year, USCIS has announced that they have met the statutory cap for Employment based cases so will not be adjudicating any more I-485 applications until October 1,